He spoke with false age to his voice, something which didn’t surprise her. Ahren had always had some tinge of age in his voice, even though there had been scarcely a year between her herself and her father. But it was that and the experiences in their lives that made a gap seem like the one she had with her mother, and somewhere in the back of her mind she heard herself remark internally again that he was too young to seem that way. Regardless of any familiarity there was about him, this Snake as he introduced himself as, Corona was left to shove the thoughts elsewhere. It mattered not that he was young, he was there and he had been in the thick of war where lives had already been lost.
At least this time, they didn’t have to worry about making an exchange for her niece. To her, there were far few things worse than trying to barter blood for blood. “Corona,” she offered in return, adding, “has someone had a look at that?” She may not have been much of a fighter, but she had long marketed herself in the steps of an apothecary. Wherever the spark had began was beyond her, whether it had come from whatever Misery dabbled in or the first few grasps of first aid she had ever watched her father administer to himself, it was there. It had a beat like that of her heart, but a pulse not found and unexpected in the likes of their kind. Inferni fought to kill and died for it more often than they ever saved.
Perhaps that was why she always had a tendency of walking back in the door the moment the bugle bellowed and the smoke arose on distant border — this was the second—maybe the third, who was she to know—time this had happened.
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